Thursday, 31 July 2014

Romanian Regionals 2014

On the 20th of July 2014 Wargames Store in Bucharest organized the first X-wing tournament in Romania (Regional tournament). This is a retelling of events as I remember them.

I was used to only playing 1 friend regularly who also bought in, the other were just people from our gaming group coaxed into playing :). I was excited to be able to test my skills.

One week before the tournament wave 4 arrived and we found out it was legal, so we tried the new ships. My go-to list at the time had Krassis with Heavy Laser Cannon and Howlrunner miniswarm, so I was excited to swap out Krassis with the new Phantom. I still remember flying it off the map in my first game on the second turn, because I missjudged how far a 2-bank decloak takes you. My friend went with Etahn and 3 B-wings, and we proceeded to do some training matches, which went extremely well. Echo seemed like a difficult ship to fly, but rewarding so I also spent quite some time familiarizing myself with the decloak paths. I would just drop some asteroids on the table, and decloak-move all around. Nowadays you can train with Echolocation, just pick a place on the map and try to get the best firing solution on it with a decloak and a maneuver.

The turnout for the tournament was smaller than I expected, only 9 people showed up, and I got a bye in the first round. Oh well, first tournament! The tournament was 4 rounds of swiss with a top 4 cut, so there would be plenty of games to be played. I had plenty of time to see the other lists and take lots of pictures. There was plenty of diversity, no two lists were alike. Unfortunately, I was too focused to take pictures while playing, so most of them are from the first round.

My first opponent had Soontir, Carnor and Turr Phenir. Since I had initiative, only Soontir would shoot before me. I lured him with Echo (shooting from behind an asteroid). As he approached, I moved sideways and charged with my Ties. One interceptor bumped took 3 range 1 shots, another was killed by Echo.

My second opponent was my friend with 3B's and Etahn. Turns out he was the only one who didn't outbid me on PS. We met with Ties charging on him near the edge of the map, Echo flying a bit behind, shooting from behind asteroids. I lost two ties and almost lost Echo to a mistake, but I emerged victorious.

I played my third opponent twice, once in the last swiss round and once in the top4. He had Wedge with Swarm tactics and R2-D2, a Gold squadron Ion and 2 Rookies. My plan was to take out Wedge with the Ties in a frontal assault, while Echo shot from afar or out of arc. In the first game he had a range 3 PS9 shot on Echo, in the other game he didn't. Both games played out fairly similarly, with my Ties getting a good engagement in the first round of combat. In one of the games he managed to Ion the Phantom and bring it down to 1 Hull, but he couldn't kill it.

In the finals I faced a list with Corran Horn + PtL + FCS, 2 Rookies, 1 Gold. For some reason we either rolled for Initiative or i gave him initiative, fact which I can't explain. A regrettable decision, if that was indeed the case. Perhaps I thought moving after Corran would give me a better advantage than shooting before him. I setup on a long winding path to either split his forces or flank, while Echo went in the middle as bait. The two Rookies and the Y (which had no turret) engaged the Fighters, dealing a lot of damage in the first few rounds. Meanwhile, Echo was letting Corran chase her. As the Ties weren't doing well on their own, I decided to help them with Echo. Corran was at least 1 turn away from the fight as the Ties with the help of Echo finally managed to kill the Rookies and the Gold squadron. I remember that at this point my opponent resigned.